Xybots
(Domark, 1989)
Venture into the Xybots’ lair and kill the master Xybot. The lair consists of mazes of corridors, and killing the Xybots requires tactics; if you run straight in with your guns blazing, you could leave yourself exposed to other Xybots coming at you from behind! Your energy depletes rather fast, though, so you’ll have to be quick – but at least you don’t have to kill every Xybot to go to the next level. The game is an obvious Spectrum port with little colour used, and the tune on the menu is terrible, but all of this doesn’t detract too much from what is still a good game, especially with two players.
Xyphoe’s Nightmare
(YB Soft, 2022)
YouTube streamer Xyphoe is having a nightmare. He has to collect as many Bridge-It cassettes as possible so he can destroy them and prevent his viewers from pestering him to play that game once and for all! If you don’t watch Xyphoe’s livestreams, Bridge-It has become a long-running joke among its viewers due to it being such a terrible game. Xyphoe’s Nightmare is a standard platform game in which you must avoid enemies, jump across gaps and collect the cassettes that are scattered across fourteen screens. The graphics are really colourful and well animated, and I love the music. There is a practice mode that gives you 99 lives, but the normal playing mode only gives you a single life, as part of a high score challenge on the Antstream streaming platform. Having only one life may seem a bit unfair, but thanks to the practice mode, this isn’t really a problem.
Xyphoes Fantasy
(Silmarils, 1991)
In the land of Norem, an army of warriors called the Skulls have caused a magician to lose all of his powers. He has chosen you to trek across Norem and clear it of the Skulls and their evil leader Kan. There are four levels – a mixture of shoot-’em-up action, and one-on-one sword fighting against two of Kan’s finest warriors. This game is an absolute masterpiece; some of the programmers were involved in the French demo scene, and this influence is obvious throughout the game. The graphics and music are out of this world – something that British CPC users could only dream of. Beautiful sprites and backgrounds; overscan screens; a digitised tune on the title screen – it’s all there. The game itself is brilliant as well.
